Firewalker

by Allyson James

  Coyote chuckled. I could do more than comfort, if you’d let me. Sex with you would be wicked.

  “Restrain yourself.” I glanced at the corpse. “Do you know who it is?”

  I know. And yes, a god would make this kill if they thought it necessary.

  “And you’d do that to me? If you thought it necessary?”

  Yes.

  I stared down at the pile of bones and gore in disquiet. The vultures moved about it unhurriedly, their wings spread for balance. The dream was mercifully free of smell, but I remembered the stench.

  “Tell me one thing,” I said. “Those people who gave us a ride in Death Valley, the Shoshone. They weren’t what they seemed, were they? Did you send them to help us?”

  Coyote’s tongue lolled from his mouth as he started to pant. For that one, you’ll have to ask the lady Crow.

  The crow. I hadn’t seen her in a while. “I’ll give her a call.”

  She doesn’t like to talk on the phone.

  “I know. I’ll ask her when I drive up again.”

  Coyote winced. She’s quite a woman, your grandmother. She doesn’t like coyotes, and she wields a mean broom.

  I had the satisfaction of laughing. “If she went after you, I’m sure you deserved it.”

  Coyote didn’t bother to answer that. Time to wake up, Janet. But I have a little gift for you.

  “Don’t give me anything. Really.” Gifts from gods, especially trickster gods, weren’t always what they seemed.

  You’ll like it, Janet. Trust me.

  Famous last words. I noticed as we talked that the corpse had disappeared, and so had the scavengers. Thunder rumbled in the distance, followed by a waft of rain-drenched air. I inhaled, my mind calming.

  The dream dissolved, and I woke up in my bed. It was early morning, the sky gray, and rain poured down outside the window. Mick was gone, but he’d left me cocooned in a nice warm bed that smelled of him.

  I lifted my hand as lightning struck a few miles away and let sparks dance between my fingers. A gift indeed.

  I realized as I rolled out of bed and stepped out my back door to enjoy the storm that Coyote had never answered me directly about either the identity of the victim or whether he himself had done the murder.

  Nine

  The storm was an autumn storm, not as wild as the monsoons that swept through during spring and summer, but one that brought steady rain and languid rumbles of thunder. I threw back my head and inhaled the clean air.

  Magellan sits on a plateau that slopes slowly from the Mogollon Rim and the ten-thousand-foot White Mountains to the vistas of the Painted Desert. Wide, deep washes and gorges like Chevelon Canyon crisscross the desert floor on the east side of the old railroad bed, fissures cut by eons of flowing water. Most of the time, these washes were dry, but they’d start filling if this kept up. A shallow one ran right through Magellan, the highway curving alongside it. A few of the side streets had bridges over Magellan Wash, but many were simply cut off when it flooded. Most towns in the desert have a wash or two or three to worry about, but bridges are expensive, and mostly we just put up with it.

  The storm enhanced my healing spells, and I felt much better. My bathroom mirror showed me that the wound on my head had dwindled to a yellow green bruise, and the skin on my burned arm was healthy and brown again.

  I wanted to go back to the scene of the crime now that the body would be gone, to see if I could read anything, especially with my storm powers to help me. The killing had been cruel and nasty, and I needed to know what kind of being had done this and where to hunt it down.

  Cassandra volunteered the information that she’d seen Mick ride away north on his bike, so I’d have to go on my own. I passed through the saloon on the way out, where my guests were whispering about the death. I wanted to reassure them that if they stayed in my heavily warded hotel, they’d be fine, but not all of them were believers.

  I passed the little breakfast bar Cassandra set up every morning with the fresh breads and muffins from Magellan’s bakery and took up one of the big sugar-crusted blueberry muffins. In my youth I’d listened to a university professor explain that indigenous peoples had difficulty eating simple carbohydrates, because until very recently our diet had consisted mostly of whole grains, beans, squash, nuts, and lean protein. There’d been no double cheeseburgers, milk shakes, or beer in the times of my Diné ancestors. Our metabolism hadn’t evolved to tolerate processed flour, sweets, and, even more problematic, alcohol, she’d explained, which was why Native Americans had a higher risk for diabetes. The more isolated the tribe, the higher the incidence.

  Therefore, I knew I shouldn’t down the blueberry muffin slathered with butter and chase it with lemon poppy seed pound cake, but they were so damn good. Besides, a long road trip, nearly dying of a head wound and heatstroke, and viewing a nasty murder scene made me hungry.

  Rain pelted me as I rode my motorcycle into town. The speed limit was thirty-five on the main highway through Magellan, and they weren’t kidding. Magellan always needed money, and speeding tickets were lucrative. I rode slowly and pulled in at the town’s one gas station.

  My storm magic, too long silent, jumped along my nerves, making me wish I’d had the sense to fill up while the weather was still good. I didn’t need to be sparking lightning at the gas pump.

  Naomi Kee was there in her big red pickup. Naomi owned the town’s plant nursery, Hansen’s Garden Center, so her truck was often loaded with bags of dirt, flats of bedding plants, or whole trees as she made deliveries, but today the truck bed was empty.

  “You’re soaked, Janet,” she greeted me. “Can I drive you somewhere?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t mind.” I slid my credit card into the gas pump slot and started filling my small tank.

  “I mind. I’m shivering just looking at you.”

  The rain was coming down harder. I made myself carefully finish gassing up and put the nozzle back. My powers wanted to grab the distant lightning and all this rain and play with it, but I restrained myself around the gas fumes. My Stormwalker ancestors never had to worry about gas pumps, I thought grumpily, just as they hadn’t had to worry about simple carbohydrates.

  “I’m heading to look at the crime scene again,” I told Naomi.

  “In the pouring rain?”

  “Before everything gets completely washed away, yes. I didn’t have time to go over it last night.”

  Naomi’s blue green eyes narrowed. “That’s it. I’m driving you. I don’t want you going out there alone.”

  I started to argue, but lightning forked about a mile to the east, and I barely stopped myself from reaching for it. I needed to close my eyes and concentrate to keep myself under control. But I also wanted to get to the crime scene, so I took Naomi up on her offer.

  Naomi used the hydraulic lift on the back of her truck to load my bike, and she covered the Sportster with a tarp. She pulled out onto the main road, also carefully driving the speed limit. Chief McGuire’s boys had us trained.

  Naomi asked me whether the body had been identified, and I had to say I didn’t know. I doubted Nash would rush the information to me, but I suspected that he didn’t know either. In the gossip mill of Hopi County, someone would have leaked a name the minute the corpse was ID’d. I wondered if it was my missing guest, Jim Mohan, but until Nash got the dental records, I had no way of knowing. I also wondered whether Jim, who’d scared the mirror so much, had done the killing. And why.

  “Have you seen Coyote lately?” I asked. Naomi and her daughter Julie were friends with Coyote, as much as he could be said to have friends. Coyote had a soft spot for Julie, who’d been born with total hearing loss.

  Naomi threw me a startled look. “I gave him a ride to the south edge of town last night. Dropped him off at the end of that service road where body was found.”

  “So you are Nash’s reliable witness?” Well, I couldn’t argue with Naomi’s reliability.

  “Did he call me that?” She looked am
used. “I picked up Coyote outside the Crossroads Bar. I was driving back with a load of flats from Winslow, and I saw him hitchhiking. Julie was with me. He hopped in and asked me to drive him down here.”

  Naomi slowed the truck at the narrow dirt turnoff. Gravel shored up the entrance to the road to keep it from being washed out, but beyond that, the ruts and holes in the hard earth were already full of water.

  “Don’t drive down there,” I advised. “You’ll get stuck.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Walk.”

  Naomi pulled the truck off the highway and set the brake. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No need.”

  She gave me a stubborn look. “Janet, I know I don’t have any magic, but I might be able to spot something with my regular human eyes. Besides, there’s been one murder out here, and damned if I’ll let you be a second victim.”

  That settled it. Naomi was nice, but not a pushover. She was coming with me.

  The scene of the murder was less gruesome now that the coroner had removed the corpse and rain was washing away the blood. A lone turkey buzzard wandered around the scene checking in case the ME’s team had left something behind.

  The body might be gone, but the miasma of death lingered. I’d grown up in a household that held to traditional ways—when someone died in a hogan, the body was pushed out through the north wall, the way to the ancestors, and often the hogan was abandoned. Non-Diné didn’t always understand why, but I’d seen firsthand how much damage a spirit in unrest could do to the living.

  I smelled the stench of power that hovered over the spot and, again, sensed the victim’s surprise. Whoever the person had been hadn’t realized how close to death he or she was. That was comforting—he or she had died too quickly to be afraid—but then again, it meant that I was dealing with something that could strike swiftly, mercilessly, and efficiently. I gazed at the empty land around me, feeling an itch between my shoulder blades.

  “This is horrible,” Naomi said.

  Naomi had no magic, so she saw only the rain-drenched grasses and red earth turning to mud, the lowering gray sky, the buzzard, and the leftover blood. I saw all that plus the foul darkness that coated the spot like tar, the stink of decay and hard magic.

  The headache I’d finally managed to get rid of throbbed anew. Storm power tingled through my body, and I felt the Beneath magic stir in response. The Beneath magic urged me to find out who’d done this and destroy them, to kill as they had killed, except slowly, so they could experience every nuance of the unknown person’s death.

  All I had to do, the magic whispered to me, was send my storm power through every house in Magellan, seeking evil and destroying it. Even if I had to kill every single person, I’d be sure to get it, wouldn’t I?

  I closed my eyes, trying to shut off the voice, but that let me view the crime scene’s aura without obstruction—dense black and shot through with red, crimson like thick blood. I popped my eyes open again, preferring the gray rain streaming into my face. Water was life. The rain would wash away the blood, cleanse the air, give life back to the earth.

  But you could kill every person in this town, the magic of Beneath told me. You know how. And no one could stop you.

  I heard a rush of wings. A big black crow sailed in to land not far from the buzzard and gave the larger bird a disapproving eye. The crow turned its head and regarded me with similar disapproval.

  “I’m not going to do it,” I told her. I clenched my fists against another wave of Beneath magic that showed me how to turn the crow into a little pile of feathers. “I promise.”

  The crow kept her beady eye on me, the steady, watchful gaze that had been on me since babyhood. “Cross my heart.” I’d said that as a child when my grandmother suspected I was up to no good. She’d usually been right. “They’re my friends. I won’t hurt them.”

  The crow either didn’t believe me, or she was just a crow wondering why a human was talking to it.

  Naomi watched me worriedly. “You all right, Janet?”

  I turned my back and started for the road. “I’m finished here. I need to go.”

  Naomi fell into step beside me. “A terrible thing happened here,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”

  She was sorry for me, the Stormwalker who specialized in solving magical crimes? Naomi was too sweet to be believed. “The vortexes draw the terrible. Any place magical does.”

  “I grew up in Magellan and never noticed.” Naomi gave me a faint smile. “I thought all the vortex stuff was just a story to attract tourism. But I’ve seen some bad things since I stopped being an Unbeliever. I’ve watched a skinwalker nearly kill Jamison. Jamison had to burn the skinwalker alive to destroy it, and Jamison nearly died himself. Things like that make me wish I were an Unbeliever again.”

  “Trust me, Naomi, you haven’t seen anything as bad as me.”

  “You’re not evil, Janet. Not like that skinwalker.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Nash Jones thinks Coyote did this,” Naomi said, staring off into the distance. “He questioned me pretty hard about what time I’d picked up Coyote and when I dropped him off. He also wanted to know everything Coyote said to me. He even wants to interview Julie. But Coyote couldn’t have done something like this. I know he wouldn’t.”

  “He’s a god, Naomi. If he felt justified, he would.”

  Naomi gave me a stubborn look. “I don’t believe it for a second. You see how he is with Julie. Coyote has a lot of kindness in him, and he’s saved Jamison’s life—and mine—more than once.”

  I didn’t argue. It was true that Coyote could exhibit amazing compassion, but he was dangerous, despite his affable persona. I could imagine him laughing while he killed whoever he thought he needed to kill.

  We slogged through mud to Naomi’s truck, which sat untouched on the side of the highway. I felt like shit, but I told Naomi I wanted to ride the bike home. I needed the wind and rain in my face to clear my brain.

  She lifted the tarp from the motorcycle. I don’t know why she’d felt it necessary to cover it up—I’d ridden my Harley through plenty of snow and rain and hail.

  As soon as the tarp came off, the mirror on the bike cried, “Oh my God, sugar, you need to get home!”

  What now? “Why?” I asked irritably.

  Naomi threw me another anxious look. That’s it; I’d convinced her that I was thoroughly nuts.

  “Seriously, girlfriend, we are in deep doo-doo.”

  Damn it. I started up my bike, put on my helmet. “Go home, Naomi. Keep Julie there, and don’t go anywhere without Jamison. Anywhere, all right?”

  “That bad?”

  “I don’t know.” Frustration and fear made me impatient.

  “Assume the worst. Ask Jamison if he’s noticed anything weird around here lately—anything at all—and tell him to call me.”

  Naomi nodded. She’d do what I asked, being smart.

  I rode back through town, the mirror urging me to hurry all the way, but I didn’t dare break the speed limit. Salas or one of the uniform cops stopping me to cheerfully hand me a ticket would just slow me down.

  The rain was coming down harder as I reached the Crossroads, parked the bike, and strode into the hotel. Cassandra wasn’t behind the desk, but everything looked quiet. Pulling off my helmet, I headed to the saloon.

  The saloon was deserted except for a large man with a hard face and long black braid who sat at one of the tables, sipping from a bottle of beer. His denim biker vest and sleeveless shirt showed that his muscular arms and neck were covered with interlocked tattoos. As I walked in, unnoticed, he moved the beer bottle from his lips and glared at the mirror.

  “Hey, magic mirror,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You just come over here and make me, you big bully,” the mirror said.

  The man held up his hand, flame dancing in his palm. “Shut up, or I melt you.”

  The mirror made a noise li
ke ewp, but I felt the thing sense me and relax. Mom was home.

  “Let me guess.” I put my hands on the table and leaned to study my visitor, who returned the look with eyes of chilly light blue. “Dragon?”

  Ten

  The dragon-man looked me up and down, then fixed a blatant gaze to my cleavage. “I get why Micky wants to keep you alive, girl. You’re one fine-looking lady.”

  “The saloon isn’t open yet,” I said coldly.

  “It’s open for me, darling. By the end of the day, you’ll open for me all the way.”

  In his dreams. “I own this hotel. Get out of it.”

  The man hooked a booted foot around a chair leg, slid out the chair, and planted both feet on it. “Not until I’m done.”

  I held up my hand, drawing on the lightning outside until sparks crackled and danced on my fingertips. “You’re done now.”

  The lick of flame sprang back into his palm. “You want to play, little Stormwalker?”

  I wasn’t certain I could hurt him, but I’d never tell him that. The night I’d met Mick, I’d slammed him with about nine thousand volts of lightning, and he’d just laughed and sucked it in. My power, unless I was in the heart of a storm, made dragons stronger. But Beneath magic, the little voice whispered, is the antithesis of all things dragon.

  Before I could figure out what the hell that meant, something moved past me with incredible speed. The chair the dragon-man sat on was scraped back and dragged around to face a furious Mick.

  “Out,” Mick said. “Now.”

  The stranger grinned, showing white, slightly pointed teeth. “Aw, come on, Micky, I came to help you. Screwing your woman will be just a bonus.”

  I’d seen Mick angry, but never like this. “Get away from my mate and the fuck out of my territory before I kill you.”

  The dragon-man lifted his hands, now free of fire. “Hey, I’m not here to cop your place. If that was my intention, it would be burned all to hell already, and you know it.”

  “Not through my wards it wouldn’t be.”

  “True, you’ve got some good magic here. And a magic mirror. Mouthy little shit.”